An infant should normally be held positively in place when a passenger in an automotive vehicle. The seats normally provided for adults are usually inadequate for securing a child in place, first of all because they are so widely spaced as to leave considerable room for side-to-side motion, and secondly because they hold the child normally so very low in the seat that he or she is unable to see out and is therefore unhappy and uncomfortable.
Accordingly the standard practice, as seen in German utility model No. 7,339,423, has been to provide a special chair or carrier for the child which can be rested on the seat and held in place by the normally provided seat belt. Such an arrangement provides an excellent side-to-side and forward-and-backward protection for the child, while at the same time elevating the seating location so that the child can see out the windows. Nonetheless such an arrangement must be specially mounted in the vehicle each time it is to be used, and must be removed when the seat is to be used by an adult. These difficulties therefore violate a basic premise of such a safety device: that they be so convenient that the user is never tempted to neglect them.
It has also been suggested in German utility model No. 7,612,141 to build a system right into the vehicle seat. This is done by providing a fold-down arm rest that, when folded down, forms a recess in the back part of the automotive-vehicle seat while simultaneously constituting a raised sitting cushion for an infant. This arrangement has been found unsatisfactory in that it places the infant in a laterally closed recess from which there is virtually no visibility to the side. Similarly the folded-down armrest is relatively long so that the infant's legs must either extend straight forwardly, or he or she must straddle the arm rest, frequently an uncomfortable position. What is more locking the belts in front of the infant in order to secure him or her in place is a frequently cumbersome task that the user is tempted to neglect.